Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

I like this, quick and simple to use. For example, adding images to tokens was a breeze .

Couple of suggestions from a heavy user of Roll20 ...

Too many menus and all look slightly different: you have left and right panels, the menu and the hover tool bar. Put the menu at the top of the right panel and, if you close it, have a simple < button at the top right to open it again. This would eliminate the weird space between the Action Widget and the right sidebar. Could the right and left action bars be merged?

There appears to be no way for the DM to fix a mistake such as a player accidentally ending their turn early.

Some data entry tasks (e.g. setting character scores) have unnecessary steps, like I have to click "Set Strength" instead of just having a pull down. And I have to set each stat individually and click update instead of setting all 6 and then have one update button. Stats really should also have a point buy and standard array options, most people I know use one of these.

Same will spell selection ... each spell slot is a selection instead of a "Pick 6 1st Level Spells" or "Pick 2 Cantrips" multi-select.

YakiSauce · 2 years ago

Wow, great feedback. Thanks! Someone else suggested something similar about the main menu and the right sidebar. I can't quite picture what that would look like but I'll definitely experiment with it. And on merging the left and right sidebars, I have considered that but couldn't really figure out a way to make it work - I don't want people to ever miss the action thats happening the left sidebar. Everything else makes total sense to me - agreed on all of them. Thanks again for checking it out!

todoG · 2 years ago

Might be worth looking at how Godot let's users position right/left side bars. Leave it up to users what the final composition looks like. Focus on opinionated logic that enables endless menu composition, not deciding your users preferences.

Perhaps add a notification icon for when users need to be made aware some result is ready for their review/acknowledgement.

Ensorceled · 2 years ago

The title of the right bar could just be the menu pull down showing the current selection instead.

[ < v Add Tokens ]

Yeah, for the player the left bar being the "battle log" and the right bar being their character isn't a bad UX if the rest of the clutter is reduced.

Personally, I would market this and build it out for any other TTRPG system but Dungeons & Dragons. I absolutely love Dungeons & Dragons but I think the writing is on the wall that DnD Beyond is going to get the lion's share of all digital DnD spending, especially for newer players. There's always going to be holdouts who don't like the corporate direction, but the majority are going to use DnD Beyond because of how well integrated it all is, and that will include both 2d and 3d tabletops soon enough. So if you're planning on turning it into a side hustle, you're probably better off targeting say Call of Cthulu players, or Fiasco players or Fate players etc.

YakiSauce · 2 years ago

Yeah, you make a good point. Definitely something I've thought about. When I started working on Diceright, DnD Beyond hadn't even been acquired by Wizards yet, so a lot has changed in relatively short time. That being said, they recently released an alpha of their 2d tabletop and there really wasn't much there. I assume it will get a lot better though. Still, it was a tough call on what to focus on as DnD really is a huge player in roleplaying games. A smaller slice of DnD users still might be larger than a bigger slice of another game. In the end, DnD is the game I know the most and the one I love. So I decided to do what I thought would be the most fun.

rcarr · 2 years ago

Yeah you've got to follow your passions. I reckon you could be well positioned to take advantage of an emerging market though. I'm pretty new to it all myself but I've been doing lots of reading on it the past year, and it seems the recent DnD popularity explosion mainly happened through Stranger Things bringing into the popular public conscious again and then Twitch/YouTube players like Critical Role. The latter seem to be drifting slowly away from DnD towards their own RPG systems and ecosystems. If you have a well developed product you may even be able to contact the teams behind these systems who may be interested in acquiring your product to become the base of their own DnD Beyond like system.

I'd join as many RPG reddits, forums and discord channels as you can find and then just periodically scout to see if you can spot any emerging trend and ride the wave. I personally reckon it's only a matter of time until there's some show on par with Critical Role's popularity but for detective RPGs, superheroes, sci-fi, Cthulu or whatever.

59nadir · 2 years ago

How much in the project is really D&D-specific? In your estimation, how much would have to change and be reworked in order to support, for example, Pathfinder 2e? PF 2e-support was the first thing I was thinking I wanted in this, but I am also atypical in that I don't even have a group and I'm just scouting around for a place I could use if/when I make one.

audiodude · 2 years ago

I would suggest keeping a D&D feature set, which is a "common ground" that most people are familiar with, to demo the app. But I agree with the post above, niche system players are going to love this more since they are underserved.

tomlagier · 2 years ago

My counterpoint to this is just that DDB is not a super usable piece of software (it's slow, buggy, and expensive). It's got the massive advantage of having the rights to sell D&D content, but there's definitely room for disruption in that market.

dragonwriter · 2 years ago

They also have the advantage of the rights to create and use derivatives of D&D content, which unlicensed competitors don't.

Which somewhat limits the room for disruption in that (D&D-specific, not RPG VTT more generally) market.

sbergot · 2 years ago

As someone playing non-dnd games, I have to recognize that the market share for DnD 5e is so big that it make sense to target that even with DnD beyond. It's like wondering if you are making a gaming platform whether you should target linux since windows is covered by steam. The answer is: you should still target windows.

The other option is to make it game agnostic and focus only on the map part.

sbergot · 2 years ago

I have created this one for cairn: https://abacus-cairn-beta.wandering-mushroom.com/ but it is mapless. For smaller rpgs I really believe sparating maps and character sheet is the way to go.

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mikepk · 2 years ago

Very nice! :) I also had a similar itch a while back and built https://gamescape.app (during the pandemic). Different focus -- all about shared maps and tokens rather than a "full" VTT. Plan is for it to be free forever. Can't work on it anymore since I started a startup that eats 100% of my time, but totally usable (my group uses it every week :) ).

infinitezest · 2 years ago

This looks exactly what I started building awhile ago (and then bailed when I discovered Foundry). Do you think you'll ever release the code so it can be self-hosted?

I've toyed with OSS'ing it or releasing the code. It would be a non-trivial amount of time and energy to package it in a way that people could host it. Gamescape was a hobby thing so I used some different architectural patterns I'd been wanting to experiment and play with that aren't totally standard.

Thanks so much to everyone for all the feedback and great comments. It's been really great reading through them all

If anyone's interested in following along as I keep building Diceright, I just set up a discord server: https://discord.gg/UpNn7yz6. I'll keep my roadmap updated there and would love to continue chatting with anyone who's interested

manbash · 2 years ago

This looks like a really awesome project.

But, I can't understand if this is a subscription service or I can simply self-host. I don't want to sign up without having that information first.

Great question. So far, I've just been doing this myself as a side project so I haven't spent much time thinking through how I would or could monetize it (open to suggestions on that). That being said, I think eventually, it would probably have to be some kind of subscription, if there's any real interest in it. It's not really built to be self hosted right now unfortunately.

garba_dlm · 2 years ago

my suggestion is don't monetize

you already did it which in a way means it's already paid for. just donate it. open source it? set it free

but it's your choice to make.

losvedir · 2 years ago

Neat. My friends and I have a campaign going on roll20.net. I don't suppose there's any way to "import" our current stuff into here? Is this just for new campaigns? Our DM manages everything so I'm not entirely sure what's involved (I think he's purchased some add-ons maybe) or if this is even a sensible question.

Hey yeah, totally sensible question - wish I had a better answer. Unfortunately there isn't a great way to transfer an ongoing campaign. That's one of the main issues with getting folks to try out new virtual tabletops - there's some pretty established platforms already out there and there's a fair amount of lock in. Especially if you consider the assets a lot of DMs have purchased on those platforms, like you mentioned.

But I'm hoping eventually Diceright will have enough 'killer features' that people will give it a shot anyway. Would be great if you guys would consider it once you finish your current campaign. Thanks!

secabeen · 2 years ago

There is a converter from Roll20 to FoundryVTT. I've used it with great success:

https://github.com/kakaroto/R20Converter

fckthisguy · 2 years ago

The VTTES plugin for Firefox/Chrome allows for importing/exporting between OrcPub/DungeonMastersVault, Foundry, and roll20 formats.

Worth checking out if you could support one of those as an import target.

kayodelycaon · 2 years ago

Same. My game is using roll20 for maps and D&D Beyond for books and character sheets. There’s a chrome extension that can link them together.

Rather than using the menu drop down button, I would integrate that into the title of the right panel, so you click the title of the panel and that brings up the options for each section like "Add Tokens, Map Details" etc. I'd also move the exit campaign button out of that menu as it doesn't really affect the right panel so it doesn't feel like it belongs there. I think I'd put it on a permanent overlay in the top left corner over the dice history, and maybe have a confirm exit pop up modal with a setting to turn the modal off. I think I'd also add a way to collapse the dice history panel.

Interesting ideas. I'll take a look at how those would feel. Thanks for the feedback!

A bit tangential, but I'm not sure I could ever play D&D on a VTT. I understand the allure of playing over the internet in general, because you can pick outlandish times and don't have to be geographically collocated. But for me, D&D is more than moving tokens around, it's primarily about the roleplay, about acting out a character and seeing someone's full facial, verbal, and non-verbal responses. If I want to push tokens around I'll play some multiplayer RPG computer game.

bigstrat2003 · 2 years ago

Like YakiSauce said, for most people playing on roll20 (or similar) it's not their first choice. They can play online, or not at all. For what it's worth though, roll20 does support video as well as voice, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I'm guessing other platforms would as well.

For us, we'd definitely prefer to play in person if we could. But like you mentioned, geography can be a real restriction. The times we have managed to play in person have been great.

wolverine876 · 2 years ago

Another way to look at VTTs is that they take care of the grunt work and give you more time for the things you want.

nmeagent · 2 years ago

Why not do both? I run a five-player in-person D&D 5e campaign with a VTT (Foundry) and it works out pretty well for us. We offload much of the bookkeeping, tokens, maps, etc. to the VTT and still keep the in-person RP experience.